Yuylia Chrona is a doll to work with but as lovely as her personality, are her jewels! She is a Canadian metalsmith with a fresh aesthetic for handmade jewels. She has been featured in major publications like Elle because people just fall in love with her organic and elegant jewelry.

She is one of the five designers me and Dream Diam hand selected for our next pop-up launching 8/1 called Dream Stacks! Where five indie designers made a ring stack (three rings) meant to be worn together or separate. You can see some sneak peeks of Yuliya's work in this blog post. I got to know her better as we worked on this project and wanted to share a little more about her before our big launch of Dream Stacks!

Tell me about your background and how you got into jewelry?

I’ve always been creative. Either it’s drawing, painting, making clothes, making always made me happy. Women in my family and I always had a healthy obsession with jewellery and it’s intricate beauty and of course the heirloom stories that each piece carries with it. My mom and I used sit down in front of her jewellery box and she would tell me about each stone and how different they were from one another.

In high school I had a chance to work for an artist where I got to dabble with a lot of creative beaded jewellery and techniques and fell in love with jewellery even more! It was only natural for me to then explore my passion even further so I enrolled and finished a three year Jewellery Arts program at George Brown College in Toronto. I started my business about year after being out of school.

What’s your personal jewelry mecca?

I guess my jewellery Mecca is quality & meaning — pieces that translate into an heirloom. I always create with that in mind. Like: “would someone wear this in 100 years? Will it last that long? What story will it tell?”.

What’s your greatest inspiration?

My greatest inspiration is nature and travel. I wouldn’t be able to pick one if I had to. Both are so important to me. I get away from my daily routine by traveling and a lot of my traveling involves exploration of the natural world that I have not yet seen or need to come back to.

Why do you love what you do?

I love what I do because I get to make something special out of literally nothing; I get to leave a little bit of myself in each piece — my vision, my inspiration, and then see it become a part of mine or someone else’s daily life. It’s way of relating and connecting.

What excites you about this project with Gem Breakfast

What excites me about this project with Gem Breakfast is that it’s not just me collaborating on these pieces but also other talented jewellers from different parts of North America. The exposure is great but the fact that we get to come together and work on something special, all of us, together, that’s exciting!

What sets your jewelry apart?

I think what sets my jewellery apart is that I bring the rough aesthetic together with elegant look. All of my settings are hand carved and I use a lot of unusual stones but the final result is always very wearable, which makes it the modern alternative to the classic as we know it.